Achievement of the Month

How many of you does this sound like? I had our April pack meeting all set to go and planned out, it was going to be great. I had all my ceremonies, props, activities, etc. Everything was ready. Then, a couple hours before pack meeting, I get a text message from our Committee Chair that we can’t use the gym at our church building where we meet because another group is using it. This means that we have to use one of the smaller rooms which won’t fit any of our games, activities, nothing. Sound familiar?

So, at the last minute I had to come up with a whole new pack meeting. The core value for April was Faith so our pack meeting was centered around that. With little ideas coming to mind, I jumped immediately to Baloo’s Bugle. In there I found instructions to make a simple neckerchief slide out of a pretzel, some craft foam, and pvc pipe. There is also a great story to go along with it that you can share that tells the history of the pretzel and how it relates to faith (see below). Unfortunately, I only have pictures of the finished product, but it’s a very simple craft so the step-by-step pictures really aren’t necessary.

Now that I have a fancy new cub scout neckerchief slide holder, I figured it’s time to start filling it with neckerchief slides. This is the first homemade neckerchief slide that I have made and it’s a great start because it’s very simple.

There are so many great neckerchief ideas out there. However, I’ve never pursued making any of them, mainly because I don’t have a great way of storing them. I’ve seen a few different neckerchief slide holders however most of them are pretty simple: pegboard and wire. I wanted to make something a bit more “elegant” than that.

A lot of the neckerchief slides that I see are made with PVC pipe, usually 1/2″. I wanted to make a holder out of wood so I figured dowels would work well to hold the slides, 3/8″ to be exact. My first thought was to use a couple of long dowels and just stack the slides on them. However, I realized that if you wanted to get a slide off the bottom, you would have to take everything off above it. So instead, I decided to use multiple short dowels, for one or two slides apiece. A dowel from any hardware store will usually be 48″ and will only run about $1.